Sophia Overturf
CODES
Dr. Smith
01/29/24
Reflection 1- Missouri Historical Society, Library, and Research Center
The mission of the MHS is to serve as the confluence of historical perspectives and contemporary issues, to inspire and engage audiences. The way they present their work with statistics presenting how many things they have in their collections. Along with the library itself and the website being easily searchable because you can specify your search to what parts of the library you want to look in. The archive was founded in 1837 though there are many years stated in the “History of the Library and Research center”. So, it is a little hard to exactly figure out when it was founded since another source, I looked at said 1866. They have a video to help you know how to thoroughly research anything on their sight, so as long as you know what you are searching for it should be easy to locate. So as long as there are key words that are being searched for whatever is being looked for, as long as it is at the library can probably be found. This archive serves people who want to learn and expand their knowledge of anything that can be found at this archive. It also serves as a local resource for research and genealogy. The stakeholders are the people who donate, the Zoo Museum district, and the board of trustees. As 2 of the 3 stated are in there frequently asked questions and you can choose to donate on the site. The information on this archive is well stated and the site is easy to navigate after searching a few needed words.
Sophia Overturf
CODES
Dr. Smith
2/22/24
Ethnography
This assignment was really interesting as having to sit and watch people might be really weird to some. My group’s question was what the urgency of people were coming into peck hall and did they open the door for others. During my time watching people I kept a tally of “people holding the doors for others, were they urgent, and were they on their phone when they walked in. My largest tally was the number of people holding doors for others. That count ended up being 19, which doesn’t sound like a lot. But I think I was sitting at peck at a not so busy time for people. During my observation I started it around 2, sitting on a couch chair thing facing the front entrance. What I could see were tables that people study at, chairs, and more couch like things. At this time, I was also eating lunch, there were only a few people when I started my observation. The way I was a “fly on the wall” in this situation was sitting eating my lunch writing on the paper I used during the observation looking up every so often. A few things I noticed during this entire observation was at a point I think a ghost, or something opened the push button door. People were nicer than I expected, opening the doors more often for others than just themselves. The only really unexpected thing that came from this observation was an older guy kept coming in and sitting down for a few mins, getting water and leaving. This happened about 3 times before the end of my observation, I thought it was really weird, but I am glad that I was done because the vibes weren’t the greatest coming from this dude.
Sophia Overturf
CODES
Dr.Smith
2/26/24
Interview Reflection
1) What did it feel like interviewing someone? Did you feel comfortable? Why or why not?
It was weird I think it was because I’ve never interviewed someone before, so it was an interesting experience. I felt comfortable; the person I interviewed was one of my friends, so it made it easier to talk to him. So, I think the interview went better because I knew the person I was interviewing, if it were a person I had not talked to before I think it would have been a lot different. Because I would not know how to exactly to approach asking them questions, and I do not know if I would feel very confident that I would be able to get the answers I was looking for.
2) Do you think you could have worded any of your questions differently for a more meaningful response?
Maybe, though I think the questions I asked were straight to the point and were easily understandable of what responses I was attempting to get. I would not know where to start when rewording these questions, as I think they were perfect for the topic they were created for. Maybe having more questions that ask them to expand on their answers, instead of having one question after another without need for expansion on what they said.
3) What did you do well in crafting your questions?
I think what I did well when crafting my responses was make them clear and simple to understand. What I did well in was keeping the relation of the questions instead of going off topic and asking something that did not relate to the original question.
4) Describe the experience of transcribing an interview.
Transcribing the interview was interesting but also a little difficult, because I had to keep going back to the recording and rewinding to make sure I heard everything correctly to properly transcribe it. I thought my recording would be a lot harder to understand because we were in the MUC when it was being recorded. But I could hear myself and the person I interviewed clearly. I think that transcriptions of this interview was helpful to actually see the answers and questions written down instead of just hearing them.
Sophia Overturf
CODES
Dr.Smith
3/11/24
Reflection #3
Many stories matter because every story is different. Everyone has their own story to tell and has gone through life and experiences that life in a different way than everyone else. So, hearing other stories and ideas of things helps us get a point of view that we might not have thought of before. With our research we are asking people who might be impacted by the changes made to the garden. So, we interview and survey them to see what they know about and how they feel about it. To get another perspective instead of just our own ideas and research.
I am not the greatest at telling stories about myself, I worry too often about other people to keep a good memory of myself. I have been told I was a very independent child, I had a “I do it myself” attitude. I read a lot of books and created characters and stories in my head, I really enjoyed learning and my interest of the human body and science started at the age of 5. I also had and still have a large obsession with dinosaurs, so that was and still is one of my biggest interests. I was really sporty, I was a cheerleader, I played baseball, softball, soccer, if it was a sport I played almost every single one I could. I was also really friendly with other people and made friends really easily and I never judged anyone for anything. Even when I was bullied in the 3rd grade, I still did not let that affect me and I was really grown up about it, even if sand and rocks were thrown into my eyes. Then a few years later, specifically 7th grade I gained an interest in choir and a lot of music. I was also in a club called media club where we recorded videos and the morning announcements. This is where I re met the people who are now my best friends Robin who I apparently met years prior and did not remember nor did they remember. And Colin who I also met in media club, and we are still good friends to this day. But a few months went by, and my body decided that it hated me, so I went to the hospital where I had to get my gull bladder removed immediately because it could have ruptured.
Then high school came around and I had half a year of freshman year until covid hit. But during this time, I got to know my family better and hung out a lot more with Robin because they lived down the street. I got to go physically back to school the second semester of sophomore year and I joined theater and had a lot of fun with that for the rest of high school, to the point I became a thespian. Junior year was the first normal year after all this, and I finally got to start knowing Calvin the final member of my friend group. We met freshman year but due to lockdown we did not talk a whole bunch. Senor year, was probably the best year of high school for me I got to be in 2 science classes which was really fun, and I learned a lot about world politics, where I gained my most recent interest of Eurovision because apparently a music competition especially this one is a very political thing. And I did not know that until last year but even to this day I am still learning about that part of it. But yeah, that is my life up until now.
I think everyone who has met me will have a very different story about me and very different thoughts about me as a person. I do not know what I would want their story of me to be, I would be curious to hear about their stories. As I can imagine that there are gaps in knowledge in each story about me, I even have gaps in my memory about my life to where I had to ask my mom what had happened throughout it because I did not remember. So, if there are gaps in people’s stories about me it would likely fill the ones, I have about myself.
Sophia Overturf
CODES
Dr. Smith
3/18/24
The observations that I have made is that it would be really difficult to get to places without a car. As there aren’t many things that are can be easily traveled to. Also yes as I tend to attempt to travel to different places in Edwardsville to get a better idea of the city and what it has to offer. it might impact people who live on campus and don’t have a car, since there is transport but it doesn’t go everywhere someone might want to go in the city. Although since there is campus transport and there are a lot of places that someone can go, I think they might have an easier time going to them instead of trying to go farther into Edwardsville. I have also heard from a friend that there are paths for people to walk or bike if they don’t have a car. So it might be easier to venture out, even if they don’t get to their destination as quickly as they want to. That even though it is a college town, there aren’t very many ways to get to places in town. The only way I think that will probably fix the element I observed is to maybe add more paths on campus to the city. Or possibly adding more places on or closer so the people who are on campus can get there without issue. Though as a person who doesn’t live on campus and having a car, I can get places a lot more easier than a good portion of people. So my answer to these questions might not be the best since I don’t have much issue getting to places I want to. The only issues I have is with mainstreet parking but I don’t think there’s a fix for that since it is built so weird.
Sophia Overturf
CODES
Dr. Smith
3/29/24
I am neither for nor against data cleaning, yes it can cause some problems and erase data that might be needed later. But it can also help get rid of responses that don’t help give the information needed for whatever the data was collected for. We see in the reading “how to lie with statistics” that cutting the graph in half can give false information to look better and seem to have better looking data. This showing whatever the person who took the data and cut the graph wants people to see. In the reading “data visualization: ambiguity as a fellow traveler” it states that if as much as an error can be misunderstood so can anything more complex. Though some scientists enjoy the ambiguity and the uncertain results that present themselves mainly for showing multiple experts side by side. A challenging facet of visualizing data is the uncertainty for which data is present or is missing. I think when cleaning up data we should aim to be somewhere in between messy and clean. Because if the data is too neat and clean there could be things missing from it. But if it is a little bit messy there is a more likely chance of keeping all the data that is needed. Whilst also having it a bit tidy so it doesn’t look too jumbled but also comes with a possible certainty that everything is where it needs to be. So, cleaning data is a mess of itself, and sometimes keeping it too clean might mess up the data even more than when it was starting to be cleaned. There will never probably be a good way to properly clean data and get what you want as well, so I say embrace a little messiness just for a good measure.